Page 17 of Blood and Trouble

“Says the female who spent the better part of the year sneaking around with a male twenty years her senior.” Talk about dumb. If Lycan found out…if Ren found out…they’d both have gutted the male in question, regardless of his rank in the MC.

She gasped and looked around before pushing me into a small alcove on the other side of the door. “You shut your blasphemous mouth. I told you that in confidence.”

“Half a bottle of whiskey hardly counts as confidence,” I said with a laugh.

Channing crossed her arms. “That’s over, anyway. I broke it off last week.”

“His arthritis get in the way?”

She gasped and shoved at my shoulders. “I happen to like older men. Nothing wrong with that.”

“Except that he sits next to your brother at the officer’s table.”

“Guys my age don’t know how to find a clit to save their lives.”

I scrunched my nose in fake outrage. “I’m a guy your age.”

Roughly.

Did six years count? It wasn’t as big as twenty.

“And you’re desperately in love with my brother.” She let out a dramatic sigh. “Such a shame, too. If he hadn’t sunk his claws into you first, I could have snatched you up, and we would have been happily mated by now.”

I huffed at her partially sarcastic comment. It had only ever been platonic between us. We weren’t each other’s type. We both liked our partners extremely dominant and emotionally unavailable. Though I’d admit she had a point. It would have been a hell of a lot easier if we were into each other.

“C’est la vie,” she hummed, playfully patting my cheek. “See you at dinner?”

I mumbled something that sounded like “yeah” before she headed to the tech room.

CHAPTER 4

Ava

“Two names signed now. Four more to go, and all of them waiting on Scott,” I told Maeve.

“What are you going to do if he doesn’t agree?” she asked.

“He will,” I said. I didn’t have another choice. I’d have to get him on board, no matter what. “I’ll be home in a few weeks. And then you’re going to confess whatever you’re keeping from me.”

“I’m not keeping anything,” Maeve replied, but that was a lie. She’d been lying to me the whole conversation. I woke up at 1:00 a.m. a few nights ago, certain that something was wrong with her. My entire body went cold, my heart thundering in my chest like it was missing its other half. The only other time I’d ever felt it had been when I watched her collapse in front of me after going into cardiac arrest. “I have to go. I love you.”

I groaned and ran my hands over my face. “Love you, too.”

I sat back on the couch and took a sip of wine, staring out the hotel window at the streets of Copenhagen below. Lycan and I had been here for almost two weeks, and since then, a lot had happened in Helena. Marx, the man who’d raided our property and killed our workers, had died. Good riddance. I hadn’t let myself think about the rest of it or what it meant. There would be time for that when I’d fixed everything else.

Maeve had fallen in love with a Bastard, with Mill, her childhood crush. While I was happy for her, I also seethed with something rotten and scalding. Everyone in my life was moving on, and I stood stagnant, staring down the barrel of working myself to an early grave.

Lycan had said Kodiak was sending reinforcements, but he didn’t seem happy about it. I didn’t ask why. We’d gotten closer since our confessional poker game, spending most of our personal time together until we were exhausted and went to our separate rooms. However, as part of our increased security protocol, our suites were now adjoining, and the door between us was to remain unlocked at all times.

He was off tonight. I didn’t ask questions about that, either. Whatever he got into during his spare time wasn’t my business, even as I stared at the barrier with quiet contemplation. Was he in there now? Probably not. He’d likely taken advantage of the notorious nightlife available to us in this city and gone out.

Perhaps the better question was…why hadn’t I taken advantage of it? I could call Locust or Bow and ask them to escort me wherever I wanted. But I didn’t feel like it. My bones shivered, and I alternated between hot and cold flashes. Jury was still out on whether I was getting sick, despite brimming with energy that made falling asleep feel like a chore.

I wanted to stay in, to turn this suite into a comfortable oasis, and that thought made me feel even worse about myself. What sort of recluse wanted to mope about an empty hotel room when the European city of sin awaited them just beyond their cage?

Deciding not to mentally torture myself by meandering through that destitute neural pathway tonight, I stood and walked around my suite, looking for my work laptop. Might as well get something done before the onslaught of meetings tomorrow, but after checking every room and my work bag, I couldn’t find it.

Suddenly remembering I’d left it in Lycan’s kitchen after we returned from the happy hour with our Danish colleagues this afternoon, I went to the door connecting our suites and turned the handle to pull it open. I didn’t think twice about it.